Reviews
Moffett, as pragmatic as he is spiritual, asks what there is to lose by trying his reforms. He contends that people who adopt "the spiritual view" are inclined to feel better about themselves, to experience success in their undertakings, and behave more charitably towards others.
The Univers al Schoolhouse
is an enlightening book which offers possible solutions to our societal ills through an educational reform which is preventive rather than remedial. Reducing crime, drug addiction, and the sky-rocketing costs of social services are sorne rewards Moffett promises. His proposaI offers much food for thought. I recommend that both educators and parents readThe Universal Schoolhouse,
but, even more, I recommend it to administrators, to govemment officiaIs, and to Corporate Ameriea because only they have the power to make the changes.LINDA ANDERSON McGill University
WAYNE E. FULLER. One-Room Schools of the Middle West: An iIIustrated history.
Lawrence. KS: University Press of Kansas (/994).
156 pp. 329 B & W photographs. $29.95. ISBN 0-7006-000673-8. Using highly selective sampling as his data, Professor Fuller presents a descriptive survey of sorne 90,000 one-room schools that once flour-ished in the Middle-West of America. In successive chapters he traces their first appearance as primitive structures of the early pioneers, through "the little white house" of the twentieth century, to their piece-meal closure under policies of consolidation after the Second World War. Throughout, he is not blind to the defects and deficiencies of "one-roomers". But he is also quick to identify these schools' many strengths, not least that of being the heart-beat of continuity in the little farming communities they served.
His style of writing is relaxed, urbane, conversational in tone, which makes for attractive reading. His chapter on "School Days" is very much a sentimental joumey into the past, familiar perhaps to Canadian readers from L.M. Montgomery's
Anne of Green Gables.
lndeed, Fuller (as have sorne other writers) regularly falls under the powerful spell these long-gone schools continue to exert. He opens with a poem which is a nostalgie tribute. He himself can wax poetic, as in "the miU is silent, save for the water from the mill-pond spilling over the dam" (p. 127); or elsewhere "for more than a century children had played beneath the shade-trees in the school-yard, or had perhaps attended theRelliews
church across the way ... " (p. 123). He proudly proc1aims the students were "heirs to the great outdoors" (p. 52). Young wo~en-teachers, not all of them "nubile" (sic!) "went out to slay the dragon 'ignorance'" (p. 59). Fuller deplores the "blandishments" of a consolidation policy which "never really lived up to its advocates' claims" (p. 99). He tilts at those modem educators who "determined that being a good school was not an effective way to teach values" (p. 62). The occasional personal opinion creeps in, as in "larger, if not better, schools" (p. 122). Cer-tainly, he doesn't like "urban sophisticates" (p. 94).
The text is copiously illustrated with small black-and white photo-graphs, sometimes several to a page. These are excellent. But other tables containing miscellaneous statistical data are less successful be-cause of minuscule print (as on pages 77, 101, 108). A minor misprint appears on page 84. For those who would write off the quality of the education these small schools once provided, Fuller points to the local pride farmers had in "their" school; to the low illiteracy rate among school-Ieavers; to the great contribution they made to an emerging professional c1ass. His last page is a ringing defense of the quality of this education.
In brief then, this book is less of a critical research study and more of a family album for the lay public to read, full of fascinating vignettes of a bygone era.
E.L. EDMONDS UnilJersity of Prince Edward Island
Professor Edmonds is the co-author. with Professor F. Bessai. of Small Rural Schools
on Prince Edward Island.
RICHARD J. HERRNSTEIN & CHARLES MURRAY.
The Bell CurlJe: Intelligence and c/ass structure in American lite. New York: Free Press (1994). 845 pp. $40.00.
Who says there is no reincarnation? Henry Goddard, a leading figure in the field of mental retardation
